


The Fish's Palace

by UrsulaKohl



Category: The Raven Tower - Ann Leckie
Genre: Chemistry, Gen, Geology, Perfume, Shipworms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:40:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21739252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/pseuds/UrsulaKohl
Summary: I will tell you a story! There was a woman, in a palace near the city known as Therete, who had never seen the ocean. Yet she had a skill needed to build a fleet!
Comments: 24
Kudos: 44
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Fish's Palace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eccentric_Hat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eccentric_Hat/gifts).



I like to look at things from more than one vantage point! I noticed this preference ages and ages ago, thinking about light. A planet can reflect light, and seem to shine. So can a moon, rotating around a planet! But if one's path about the sun aligns in just the right way with these other, changing rotations, a shining moon can act as a barrier. Then a planet, or the sun itself, may seem to grow dark. Opacity is so often a failure of perspective.

Not quite so many ages ago, I acquired multiple simultaneous points of view. I felt a definite, insistent tug of gravity first, stronger than the constant pulling of the sun. The pressure of atmosphere was entirely new to me. I was pressed, squashed, scoured by winds. Simultaneously I burned, a bright tail stretching out behind me. I tossed and crushed and shook, amid the flames, until I broke apart. I arced onto the earth in separate fragments. It was an entirely new thing, to watch my other selves fall! There were new things again, in rain and snow, and later there were creatures wandering. I studied many kinds of creatures, crawling and running and walking and flying, but I particularly liked the ones who buzzed and flitted. As I had, they hung above the earth; as I did, they recognized many separate selves. 

I liked the buzzing things, I studied them closely, and part of me became part of them! I often make rapid decisions. That is easier for me, I suspect, because I see from so many angles. If one choice does not yield the response I anticipate, I choose another approach and make another choice. But sometimes I must combine all of my scattered pieces of attention, and compare the choices I have made. That is not so much effort, for a god. But it is some effort. After the fall of Iraden, it seemed more difficult, for a while.

A part of me became very interested in ships. The warm southern seas were full of ships: fat ships, fast ships, ships with oars and ships with sails! Ships are made of wood, a substance that many humans refer to as lifeless and inert. But wood has structure—a different kind of structure from the minerals I know well, where crystals clump randomly and sap wouldn't flow—and wood can be eaten. 

I grew fascinated by shipworms. Perhaps you think that shipworms are kin to worms, or are the larvae of some insect? If so, you are mistaken! They are like a clam or snail, but stretched to an enormous length, with the bare remains of a pointed shell that they use to bore into the wood. Shipworms are eaten as a delicacy in Kybal, sliced thin and fried with fermented beans and green onion shoots. I tasted their flesh, sinking my sharp tongues into the dish. I tasted their minds, their slow, cold, undulating thoughts. I learned the way that they destroy ships, slowly, passing the half-bored slurry through their gills.

The beautiful fat southern ships did not last long in the warm southern seas. Their owners either sailed them upriver, into chill fresh water where the so-called worms would shiver and die, or lifted the ships out of water entirely, to clean them and replace the soft gnawed planks. The system worked for little voyages, skipping from port to port along the coast. But it would not do for a fleet. I thought that I might want a swarm of ships!

I tried speaking to the shipworms, and persuading them to leave. The problem is that they are very dull! I explained that they are delicious, and if they displeased me, they ran a risk of being eaten. They were not smart enough to be afraid—they shuddered for a moment, and thought slow, circling thoughts of tasty wood, and went on chewing. I could protect any particular plank from any particular shipworm. That was well within my power, even for a fragment of myself! But it was boring, stupid, repetitive work, a slow drain, a constant tax of re-reminding. I found a few rich merchants who clad their hulls with copper. The shipworms muttered at the metal taste, and fell away. But if I wanted to collect a fleet, I would have to persuade the shipworms that none of my ships tasted good!

Here is a story. Perhaps you have heard it, in another form? There was a woman, in a palace near the city known as Therete, who had never seen the ocean. The palace was not far from the water: seabirds landed there, and on very stormy nights, the howling of the wind seemed to merge with the crashing of the waves. But the rulers of that city, who depended on the ocean for all their wealth and power, had sworn never to look upon it. They gave it up, the water first and then the sky, retreating further and further into the maze of palace rooms. 

I have heard that their god took the form of a golden fish. I never met him.

The woman in my story was not a queen. But in that palace where power was measured in secrets, by navigation and paths to hidden chambers, she was a person of some strength. Her mother had collected orchids. And studied them! She measured out their favored balance of shadow and light, using a carefully aligned system of shutters and mirrors. She studied, too, the way that insects carry a fine powder from one plant to another. It was a happy place to be a mosquito! 

The daughter, who had grown up around varied scents and calibrated shadows, took to manufacturing perfume. She distilled orange blossom and heliotrope, drop by careful drop. She studied oils as well, the way they hold a scent on human skin, or the way a wick can draw up a fragrant oil and release it, burning. People called her the lady Orris, after the iris root.

Therete was poor in gold. You would not guess this, from a first sight of the palace, where many things shone with a subtle sheen. But where a man in Iraden might easily have a bracelet or a buckle made of heavy gold, that metal in this palace appeared as fine-drawn wire, or a thinner coating prepared by reaction with quicksilver, or some other subtle feint. They used coins of silver or copper struck from hammered sheet, where northern cities kept accounts in gold. Perhaps that is why a golden fish seemed an impressive shape, for their god. 

The story says that the ruler of the palace owned a pure gold pin in the shape of a raven holding a flower, and that the lady Orris's mother swore she would not rest until she had such an adornment for herself. I cannot attest that such an oath was made. I can tell you that the mother, in her old age, grew restless, that the silver and yellow of orchids did not suffice, that she yearned for bright lights and shining things. And I can tell you that rumors ran around the court of a northern city, a place where gold was as common as iron or bronze, a place ruled by a bird. 

The lady Orris made a promise. This, I know for a fact. It will not surprise you that a god was listening! She promised that her mother would have a flower made of gold, and a lamp to light it by. 

I arranged for her to learn about the shipworm problem.

I have told you about perfumed lamps in palaces. But there are other, uglier uses of oil, too. It can be splashed on ships and set alight, or used to make a torch that burns for hours. Sweet oil might come from sesame seeds, or from the olive; some northern people render it from the giant seagoing creatures known as whales. In some places, though, especially in the dry lands between Xulah and Therete, dirty, sticky oil seeps from the ground. Some enterprising sailors had tried rubbing the tarry stuff upon their hulls, with mixed effect. The lady Orris heard of these attempts, and wondered if some substance, bitter or repulsive to the seeming worms, could be extracted.

The black oil can be purified into a cleaner form, in a process not so different from the slow collection of drops that makes perfume, though it is a messy, stinking business, and not fit for palaces. The oil in Therete was corrosive, as well as dirty; it ate away at iron rings and pipes. The lady Orris commanded that it should be washed, in a solution made of lye, or some such compound. She tossed a copper coin into the resulting wastewater, joking that it would bring her luck. Around the coin, the water turned a brilliant green-blue color, like a well-fed orchid's leaf.

"I recognize a portent," said the lady Orris. "Grant me wisdom, to make use of it." A fragment of me might have buzzed, in answer. Certainly her experiments were swift, and successful. In not so long, a year or two perhaps, she found a paint that seeped into the boards of a ship, turning them greener than the sea, and tasted of copper coins.

Such work, when speeded by a god, requires sacrifice.

Do you think the lady Orris died? No! She left the palace, and she left her harsh-smelling workrooms beyond the palace. She took a map and a sword and went aboard a ship, a white-sailed ship with a hull like leaves of orchids, carrying a rock of peridot crystal. Her mother still lived among the maze and shadows of the court. That was a type of access the lady Orris had renounced; she would not see her mother's face again.

You guess, perhaps, the city where she sailed!

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Copper naphthenate is still used to protect against shipworms. Thank you to kaberett and Yuletide chat friends for reading thoughtfully and helping me sort out a god-assisted synthesis.


End file.
